WriteWorld

Action with a Side of Zombies

Anonymous asked: Hi! I’m kind of new at writing, and I’m working on an action story; zombies to be exact. I don’t know how to put violence/action onto paper very well, so it’s difficult for me. Do you have any tips?

Often, the most difficult thing about writing action is the pace. It is important not to weigh down your prose with descriptors while trying to paint your gory picture. As we’re sure you can tell from watching any action-filled summer blockbuster, things move fast! If the writing is “slow” (i.e., bogged down by a ton of expansive sentences, adverbs/adjectives, and lengthy dialogue), there’s always a strong reason for it. Keep that in mind when you’re writing.

If you’re writing from the point of view of your character (first-person), remember that he or she is not an omniscient being. In an action-packed situation like yours, describing every moment in fine detail would be unrealistic. Instead, be impressionistic — a flash of blood here, a zombie moan there, a dash of gray matter to top it off. Use vivid detail that moves plot forward in fits and spurts instead of paragraphs of blow-by-blow description.

Also, the violence and action should be a gritty mixture cerebral and physical if you’re writing from first-person point of view. The character should be fighting waves of fear-induced nausea, pressing his or her aching body onward, and praying to a higher power that the zombies don’t catch up. This is some meaty stuff for writers! Relish it.

If you’re writing in the third-person, try thinking like a camera in a horror movie. You might pan over the scene from above, show some desolated street corners, catch a glimpse of your hero hiding in a basement with a shotgun, show the oncoming zombie horde, and then let the battle break out. As Richard Price famously said, “You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying in the road.”

Other things to keep in mind:

Stay true to your character! If they’re supposed to be asthmatic or afraid of the dark or what-have-you, it’s okay for them to fumble with a gun or get a bit faint. Not everyone is a gun-wielding badass. For more on this, check out Writing Violence Is Easier Than Sex over at TheCraftyWriter.
Think procedurally. Action relies heavily on chronology. There was a virus, it spread, a zombie outbreak sprung up, your hero is one of the last survivors, and then, and then, and then… You get the idea. Plan out your scenes of chaos extremely well before writing and then let the creativity flow once you know where your scene starts, how it ends, and exactly how it all happens. Check out this article on action from DavidAlexanderBooks for more, especially the last two paragraphs.
Know your stakes! In acting, this is the real bread and butter once you know your character — this is when you get to take your character out for a walk and see how they react, and in doing so you learn a lot about them. If you know how much they have to gain or lose (a simpler way of saying ‘stakes,’ really), then you’ll better understand how this zombie situation is getting them down. Your readers will know your characters and will understand why they act the way they do as long as you fully understand this for them first. Read more about that and other handy tips for action writing in Making it Happen: Tips on Writing Action Scenes by Janice Hardy.
Go ahead and over-write. Yeah, we said it. Describe everything as much as you want to. Write fifteen pages for something you want to be one page. Go ahead! After you’ve finished writing everything you can for a scene, trim away anything that slows down your story, seems unnecessary, doesn’t feel quite right, goes against character, or messes up your plan. You’ll feel the satisfaction of having a fully realized the scene and your complete understanding of all its details will inform the rest of your writing. The readers will be delighted if they can sense that you did the work and their imagination and attention span will thank you for leaving it out.
Read your favorites/Watch your favorites. Good artists use reference images; good writers use reference narratives, even if it’s just for structure. Try to think of a book that you’ve read that’s full of action. If you ever lost yourself in the moment, so much so that you forgot you were actually reading a scene, then those are the scenes from which you should draw inspiration. Read critically and take notes on their structure. How did this author treat the scene, the characters, the setting?
Quicken the pace with dialogue. Dialogue is a great way to move a scene forward quickly. Because action-based dialogue doesn’t necessarily need dialogue tags, short sentences full of emotion can propel the reader along at lightning speed. Here’s an example of action dialogue with no tags:

“Go now! Get to the docks! I’ll meet you there.”
“You sure?”
Med sprayed bullets into the wall of oncoming moaners. I watched a few hit the pavement. Blood splattered. The horde flattened those that had fallen. Closer now. A stone’s throw away.
Med glared at me over his shoulder. “GO!”
I went.

In action scenes, dialogue should be short. Very short. Feel free to put your grammar in peril to get the point across as quickly as possible, as in the case of “‘You sure?’” in the example above. The idea is to convey urgency. Also, as is the case with the actual action of the scene, stay true to your character in action dialogue. If your character is a babbler, decide on that early on and write accordingly. Or maybe your character is the silent-in-times-of-stress type. Make sure to convey your character’s voice accurately in action scenes, and that character interaction in appropriate to the group dynamic already in place.
Kill the adverbs and adjectives. Once you’ve over-written, remove all (yes, all) adverbs and adjectives. Re-read and see how the scene flows without them, adding them back in only when absolutely necessary. Descriptors are lovely, but they may weigh down your sentences. Remember, you’re going for the bare minimum of descriptive detail. Let the images you choose do the work. For instance: “He reloaded”, not “He slammed another full magazine into the empty gun”; not “There were mangled bodies everywhere in the street, piled up over twisted, bloody debris, hanging out of burned-out cars”, but “Bodies littered the street”.
Limit your use of the verb be. Instead of adverbs and adjectives, use dynamic action verbs to help add detail. Here are some lists of action and dynamic verbs that may help:
The verb be doesn’t offer as much opportunity for quick and dirty detail work using verbs. Replace sentences using be if possible.
Clip your sentences down. Figure out the simplest way to get information to your reader and do that. Don’t elaborate. Just tell them exactly what they need to know to get them to the next sentence. In matters of fast pacing, commas and semicolons are evil. There should be a comma about every five sentences during an action scene. Clipping your sentences forces the reader to work harder to imagine the scene (in a good way) instead of wading through descriptive prose to get to the action.
Jar your reader by alternating pacing.You’ve heard of bullet time, right? It’s that thing movies use to slow down action to the point where you can see a bullet moving slowly through the air toward its target. Use this same technique with your writing in times of great emotional upheaval. For example, if the hero’s friend has just been bitten by a zombie, slow down the action to a crawl and describe to your heart’s content:

Together, Jerry and Rick looked down at the oozing bite mark on his forearm. Rick’s skin was already lined with black veins, the flesh around the bite an angry reddish-purple. This was it. Jerry’s vision blurred; something in his mind snapped. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d torn his shirt sleeve from the seam at the shoulder and tied it around the wound. Blood stained the fabric immediately, but at least they couldn’t see the teeth marks anymore.
“You’re going to be fine,” Jerry said tremulously, and Rick stared up at him with wild eyes. “You’re going to be just fine.”
Denise stuck her head around the corner of the alley. “We’ve got to get moving!” she shouted. Then she saw Rick. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened!” Jerry pulled Rick to his feet. “Let’s go.”
They met Denise at the entrance of the alleyway. On the main road, things had gone south. There were bodies everywhere. Denise took aim at a nearby zombie and shot through its ear. The thing crumpled, revealing three more behind it.
“Run for it!”
“Shoot them!”
“I’m empty! Run!”
Rick tripped forward. Jerry couldn’t run and hold up Rick at the same time. Denise was already a block ahead.
“Leave me!”
“No way!”
“I’m dead, man.” Rick tore away from Jerry and collapsed against a car. “I’m already dead.”
He didn’t have time to argue. They were coming. Jerry ran.

Did you notice the transition from descriptive pacing to action-based pacing? It happens when Denise appears at the entrance of the alley. As soon as the sentences get shorter, the pace picks up. Large blocks of descriptive text are not your friend in action pacing. Pare down your paragraphs. Avoid cliched dialogue (especially in death scenes). Move your characters through space and time quickly, and you’ve got action that gets the reader’s palms sweating.

Action scenes take practice and editing. If you can, plan your scenes thoroughly before you write them, get all the description out of your head and on the page, then dial it back to the barest minimum. The reader should be whipping the pages, not just turning them. Make them stop and stare in breathless panic at the end of a chapter. That’s when you know you’ve done your job.